Camera Deals

Discover launches Price Protection and Return Guarantee (YMMV)

Just in time for the holidays, Discover has launched some new "Shop Smart" features, including Price Protection (refunds up to $500 if you find a lower price an eligible item at any store within 90 days of purchase) and Return Guarantee (return an eligible purchase for a refund up to $500 if the store won't take it back within 90 days of purchase). This is in addition to the Purchase Protection (covers eligible purchases up to $500 if they are damaged or stolen within 90 days of purchase) and Extended Product Warranty (extends existing eligible warranty for up to a year).

As usual, make sure you check all the terms and conditions of this through your Discover account or by contacting the Discover customer service representatives. There are limits, caveats, exclusions, and the like! Do not assume if you are not sure! Ask!

PS: I do not know if this feature is rolled out to every Discover card type. Check your emails or statements or your online account or other communications from Discover. Ask them if you are not sure you have this feature.

Legal: Supreme Court case may impact used camera market

A case that will be heard on Monday at the Supreme Court may impact the used camera market by striking down or diminishing the First Sale doctrine. This could impact both you as an individual photographer selling your old/used/unwanted gearand also sellers of used camera gear (retailers, etc) and also marketplaces of used or unwanted camera gear (eBay, etc). Details at the main blog.

(OLDER POST) Reminder: Camera & Photo Lightning deals on Friday

On Friday, like the last few months, Amazon will have a new round of Camera & Photo Lightning deals on Friday. We posted our usual round-up now that the specials have gone live. We don't know what the specials are going to be ahead of time, sometimes they turn out to be good, some are okay, some are yawnfests.

Section 179 deductions decreasing dramatically next year

This is of interest if you have a studio or photography business or operate (as) a small business. Consult with your accountant(s), tax preparer(s), and financial advisor(s) for details on how these may apply to your situation. This blog does not provide financial advice!

Section 179 may sound like something out of The X Files or Fringe or Star Trek, but it is also part of the tax code and it tries to help small businesses deduct their capital expenses the year-of-purchase/put-into-use instead of following the usual multi-year slower deductions. Unless something changes in the tax code, the limits will decrease dramatically over the next two years, starting in 2013. If you are planning big capital camera gear purchases or leases, you may want to take this into consideration as you make your plans. Details on Section 179 at this 179 dedicated blog. Alert/reminder via Capture Integration blog.

Nikon Coffee Cup Lens 24-70 with zoom for $14

Coffee cup in the shape of a lens mania! If you are not tired of this, and if you are an Amazon Prime member, you can get this Nikon Coffee Cup Lens 24-70 for $14. The item is sold by a 3rd-party seller but it is fulfilled by Amazon, which is why is qualifies for Prime or free shipping if the total of your order is $25+. It has 22 customer reviews with an average rating of 3.3 out of 5 (five 1-stars).

Selling your gear: KEH Photo travels coast to coast

If you are interested in selling some of your older/unused camera gear without having to deal with eBay/Craigslist/etc, and prefer in-person transactions, KEH Photo has announced their coast to coast road show. They will be traveling to different events and photo stores around the country and buying gear directly from photographers during those events. The aforelinked schedule covers October, November and December 2012, and zig-zags throughout the country.

(ENDED) Reminder: Camera & Photo Lightning Deals on Friday

This week's specials ended... This week flew fast. It is almost Friday. And Friday means that a new round of Camera & Photo Lightning Deals at Amazon will go live on Friday. The specials usually start going live on Fridays at 9am eastern. We will have our usual detailed post after the product names are revealed earlier on Friday. This is only a heads-up post.

We don't know ahead of time what the specials are. Sometimes there are good deals, sometimes there are okay deals, sometimes there are yawnfests, sometimes it feels like a drunk intern put them together at the last minute ;-) So only time will tell...

Photography t-shirts: 20% off Micro Four Thirds themed gear

If you are a fan of Micro Four Thirds, there is a new coupon code that gets you 20% off the current prices of Mu-43.com t-shirts! Details, discussion, and coupon codes through the Mu-43.com forums. These are delivered through Zazzle.

eBay updates User Agreement on Friday night

Why do corporations have to be so douchey? eBay launched a series of updates to its User Agreement on Friday night. The updates are summarized in an email sent to the registered email addresses of current eBay users. The email was sent out on Friday night. Announcing things on Friday night is a douchey practice because it limits the amount of coverage they get. So if there are any controversial provisions, they can often fly under the radar because most people take off for the weekend. If corporations want to rehabilitate their image, they can start by being more open and transparent instead of lawyering up and BSing their way out of everything. Rant ends :)

Deal Enabler: Costco membership promotion

This is not a direct deal, but a deal enabler. Costco upon occasion gets some really good deals on camera gear, typically specific kits and bundles. Case in point, a few days ago they had an online super-bundle special on the K-30 (expired now). Some of the specials are online, some of the specials are in their brick and mortar mega-warehouse-stores. If you are not a Costco member, you can still buy, but you have to pay a 5% non-member surcharge. For more expensive camera gear, this surcharge is close to the annual Costco membership fee. So if you are a regular electronics shopper, a Costco membership might be more beneficial.

With that as a semi-necessary preface, there is a special promotion for new Costco memberships. The membership prices are the same, but you can get these freebies: 48 AA Kirkland brand single-use batteries, 35pk of drinking water (great for outdoorsy photographers), and a rotisserie chicken (if you are vegan/vegetarian, perhaps you can co-ordinate with a local shelter or food bank and deliver it to them at lunch/dinner time) [or you can use it to practice food photography].

Details and discussion of this promotion at Fat Wallet.

(ENDED) Reminder: Amazon Camera & Photo Lightning Deals on Friday

These have expired... A quick reminder. Tomorrow is Friday and that means (other things equal) a new round of Lightning Deals will appear at the Amazon Camera & Photo page. We will have our usual detailed post after they go live. We do not know what the specials are ahead of time. Sometimes there are good/great deals, sometimes they are middle of the road, sometimes they look like they were created by a confused intern ;-)

Selling unwanted gear: KEH increases payouts and removes minimums

This is a reverse type of a deal! If you have old and new camera gear that you no longer want/need/use, KEH Camera has increased their payouts on gear they need and has removed minimum purchase prices (purchase on their end). Details at the KEH blog where you can find more information and their contact info.

Point of Irritation: You have something in your shopping cart

A new annoying trend is developing among retailers. If you leave something in your shopping cart, while logged on to your account, they start sending you emails "reminding" you that you "forgot" something. This is irritating, especially when it is done all the time. This will make people mark the retailer emails as spam, or delete their accounts (so they lose actual customers), or log out and never login again. The greedy marketing idiots are once again ruining things for everybody else! Grrrrr!

Request line: what are you looking for?

Since there is currently a lull in the deal department, it is time for another "Request Line". What items are you looking for so we can keep an extra eye out for them? Please use the online contact form or leave a comment or tweet on Twitter.

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone for the emails and feedback! Keep them coming! The more of these, the more helpful they are in figuring out what to check more often and in more depth!

Tips on How to Make the Most of this Blog

Time for some tips to help some of our newer readers make the most of this semi-chaotic blog!

1. For each calendar day (eg Monday June 4, 2012), we push the expired specials towards the bottom of that day's timeline. This way, you have two blocks per day - the live and the expired (the ones with ENDED, EXPIRED, DEAD, SOLD OUT, etc in the blog-post title).

2. At the top of the page, we have pull down menus that can help you filter the specials by a variety of categories, manufacturers, mounts, camera types, etc. These can be helpful especially on busy days where there are specials posted left and right

3. Links to various Daily Deals pages and Special Promotion pages are always available in the right sidebar of the blog. While we check the specials regularly, we cannot check them 24x7, so you can do a DIY check using those sections at any time

4. You can also get the latest updates via RSS - we have an everything RSS feed and also a variety of special interest RSS feeds (these are subsets of the "everything" feed - if you subscribe to the Everything feed, you get everything)

5. Prices and availability of items can change at any time and for any reason unless the specials are part of a structured promotion with a preset expiration date/time. The blog-post-text here at this blog cannot be automatically updated when something changes. The retailer websites have the latest information. A good rule of thumb is this: each blog-post here has a date and time associated with it. The further away you are in time from the posting date (or latest update date), the higher the chances are that the prices and/or availability may have changed.

6. Your purchases through this blog are what helps keep this blog alive thanks to a variety of affiliate network programs that pay us advertising fees on purchases made through this blog. As you can imagine, this blog is a lot of time consuming and ephemeral work. Think of it as butler service. If you find it useful, please help keep it alive by making your purchases through the links here. This also sends a signal that more people are interested in this blog, so we can dedicate more time/resources to it.

Woot launches $5 all-you-can ship per calendar day (Central time)

Woot.com recently remodeled their website, and along with the remodeling, came a new shipping promotion, $5 flat shipping for a calendar day (central time zone). So for any purchases you make from midnight to midnight Central Time, you only pay $5 shipping once during that day. Previously, shipping was a flat $5 per item (covering up to three units of the same item). If you purchased multiple different items during the day, you paid $5 per different item. They have also increased the number of items offered per day with the new Woot Plus. More details on the $5 shipping at the top right side of the Woot site.

The Moofi! feature also continues, and there, with 7 days left (as of today), you can get the refurbished red waterproof Samsung W200 camcorder stick for $50 plus $5 flat shipping. Limit 3 per customer at this price. Moofi specials, unlike the daily deals, have a longer duration (but they are while-supplies-last-promotions, so they may sell out earlier)

Shipping News: industry group forms to push for cheaper same-day delivery

On the shipping news front, a new industry group has formed to help all retailers small and medium (not just large) to implement same-day delivery at a lower cost. I am sure I am not the only one skeptical about committees and navel-gazing groups, but lower costs and faster deliveries are a step in the right direction! Details via PMA News Line.

Meta: "Unilateral pricing not good news for consumers" says Wichita Eagle

With even more camera manufacturers joining the price-control game (the polite way of saying it is "unilateral pricing"), it is nice to see a newspaper tackle the general issue of "unilateral pricing" in consumer electronics and discuss how this negatively impacts the average consumer. Here is the article, at The Wichita Eagle at Kansas.com by economist Edward Lotterman (via Henry Posner).

And while many can relate to the local "mom and pop" shops as they compete with the big-box online and brick and mortar retailers, what is often forgotten is the average consumer. We have multi-million dollar entities (mom and pop shops) arguing against multi-billion dollar entities (big box retailers), over the money of multi-thousand dollar entities (the average consumer). It is in some ways similar to professional sports - millionaire athletes arguing with billionaire NFL/NBA/MLB owners over the money of the average sports fan whose income is in the thousands.

Planning ahead: B&H Photo Passover schedule (place orders before Thur 4pm ET)

B&H Photo will be closing as usual for the Passover Holiday (April 6 to 14, 2012), so if you need any items shipped before then, make sure you place your orders by 4pm eastern time on Thursday April 5, 2012. Orders placed after that time will be shipped after B&H reopens on Sunday April 15 at 10am eastern time.

Planning ahead: B&H closing for Passover April 6-14

If you are planning to make purchases at B&H Photo in the near future, be sure to note that B&H Photo will be close for Passover on April 6 and will reopen on April 15, 2012. Online orders placed during this time will be processed after they re-open on the 15th. You will notice this alert when you visit any B&H page, for example, here is the refurbished 60D w/18-135 page. Screenshot crop included below...